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The 
Attack on America 



Address before the Quartered Meeting uf the 

Society of the 
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick 

In the City of New York 

(Instituted 1784) 
By 

EDWARD F. McSWEENEY 

BOSTON, MASS. 



New York 
Monday Evening, November 15, 1920 



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The 
Attack on America 



Address before the Quarterly Meeting of the 

Society of the 
Friendly Sons of St. Patrick 

In the City of New York 

(Instituted 1784) 

By 
EDWARD F. McSWEENEY 

BOSTON, MASS. 



New York 
Monday Evening, November 15, 1920 



£1 



.7. 









FOREWORD 

FOLLOWING an old-time custom, of the Society of the Friendly 
Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York, a series of 
addresses on questions of importance have been delivered at their 
quarterly meetings held at stated intervals throughout the year. 

At the meeting on November 15, 192i0, the following remarkable 
address was delivered by Mr. Edward F. McSweeney, of Boston. It 
evoked so much enthusiasm and made so profound an impression 
upon the members of the Society present that it was unanimously 
decided by them that the address should be printed for distribution 
and sent, not alone to the members, but to others in the discretion 
of the officers of the Society. 

In spite of the fact that the lecturer is already well known 
throughout the country, it may not be amiss to say a word of intro- 
duction of him to those members of the Society who were not 
fortunate enough to be present at the last meeting. 

Edward F. McSweeney is one of the foremost members of the 
group of American citizens of Irish blood who during the last two 
years have rendered such splendid service to our country in awaken- 
ing her to the dangers that threaten her from foreign intrigue, thus 
continuing the extraordinary services rendered to America by men 
of Irish blood, in peace as well as in war, throughout the entire 
period of our existence as a nation. Scholar, student, economist, 
lecturer and writer, he has done much to dispel the mists of mis- 
representation which the spokesmen of that group of citizens who 
would like to undo the work of the Revolution had spread over the 
land, and his work has greatly helped in the forming of the fairer 
estimate now held by citizens of non-Irish blood of the great con- 
tribution made to the foundation, the upbuilding and the preserva- 

3 



tion of our country by men of Irish blood. Not the least of his 
services to our country is his work in exposing in Massachusetts 
the efforts made in England's interest to re-write for our school 
books the story of the Revolution, and to present that great event 
as a petty quarrel between a German king and a handful of hot- 
headed, misguided rebels. 

The following lecture is a good example of his work. It 
discloses the wide range of his studies, and the thorough manner 
in which he handles a thesis. He states his facts clearly and argues 
dispassionately and moderately for his conclusions. 

He shows that in every generation since the Declaration of 
Independence the friends of England have been working tirelessly 
to undo the result of the Revolution and to reincorporate our country 
in the British Empire. That they have failed thus far in their 
efforts is due in large measure to the unceasing vigilance of American 
citizens of Irish blood, who have ever recognized the essential im- 
portance to America of following the advice of Washington against 
entangling alliances. 

Never was the British Empire in greater need of the assistance 
of America than at this time; never were her agents more busily 
engaged in their efforts to prove that the British Empire and America 
are essentially one in ideals, sentiments and interests. They have 
seized the Tercentenary Celebration of the Pilgrims to attempt to 
prove that our institutions are the outcome of English ideals and our 
liberty the outgrowth of English struggles for progress. 

Mr. McSweeney with lucidity and fairness shows the utter 
absurdity of this claim and places the real facts in orderly historical 
array. 

His labors will be well repaid if they result in helping to awaken 
our countrymen to the dangers that menace us from outside inter- 
ference with our affairs and recall to us the great truth that "eternal 
vigilance is the price of liberty." 

DANIEL F. COHALAN, 

President of the Society of the Friendly Sons 

of St. Patrick in the City of New York. 

4 



SINCE the completion of the Jay Treaty in 1793, there 
has been a continuous effort either to subjugate the 
United States to foreign political control, or to entangle it 
in the complexities of European diplomacy. 

Except in the minds of men like Samuel Adams and 
Patrick Henry, the American Revolution was not originally 
a struggle for separation from England, but, rather, an 
effort to reform or abolish the injustices afterward cited 
in the Declaration of Independence. While the support of 
Burke and Barre was genuine as far as it went, it did not 
go farther than to demand that the wrongs against which 
the Colonists complained, must be righted by England, but 
the imperial connection was to be maintained. Almost up 
to the Declaration of Independence, Franklin, Washington 
and John Adams were not for separation, but once the war 
was begun the situation in the Colonies crystallized into a 
clear-cut, unequivocal demand for independence. After 1778 
Washington could have ended the contest at any time, with 
substantially every demand of the Colonies granted: except 
separation. The famous Staten Island Conference, which 
rejected the proffer of General Howe, represented the unani- 
mous opinion of the colonial patriots, who, at best, num- 
bered only a little more than a majority of the total white 
population. Under the circumstances, the persistence of 
Washington and his supporters in enduring all the miseries 
which they went through for five years, after he could have 
obtained an honorable peace if he would consent to British 
control, is the best answer to the anti- American propagand- 
ists, who are today spreading fantastic falsehoods to under- 
mine American patriotism and respect for and belief in our 
national origins. 

5 



For some years after 1782 the European powers had 
little confidence in the permanency of the new Republic. 
England openly declared that the separation was only acci- 
dental and temporary. It has never ceased, to manifest this 
belief, in its attitude of hatred and hostility to this country 
at the critical periods of its career. Political differences in 
England and national peril abroad made the war against 
the American colonies the plaything of politics and had 
great influence on the result. The obvious belief that even 
if the Colonies temporarily separated, they would later be 
restored to Britain has remained ever since the mainspring 
of British attitude toward the United States. 

After the signing of the Jay Treaty and the establish- 
ment, under Hamilton, of a sound basis of national finance, 
European diplomacy began to realize that across the 
Atlantic a permanent liberalizing force in world affairs 
had been firmly established, which must be conquered or 
cajoled. Washington, who foresaw that the attempt to re- 
conquer America would be made, in 1796 laid down the broad 
philosophical principle fundamental to the idea which had 
brought this nation into being — as immutable today as when 
it was made — that Europe had, and must always have, 
primary interests with which the United States had little 
or very remote relation; the nations of Europe would, and 
of necessity must, he said, be engaged in frequent controvers- 
ies, and it would be most unwise for the United States to 
be implicated, by artificial ties or otherwise, in the com- 
binations and collusions of European friendships or enmities. 

When Washington uttered these words, England and 
France were deadlocked in a terrific struggle for mastery 
of the sea and supremacy in India, which continued until 
the Congress of Vienna erased the French Empire from the 
map of Europe. With control of the sea, and Indian domi- 
nance assured, England entered on an era of passive friend- 
ship with France, it being the English policy that after a 
competitor has been depleted by war, with its reservoirs 
of manhood and material wealth exhausted, a show of friend- 

6 



ship will permit gathering the profits of its former enemy's 
weakness, as witness the duplicity of the present English 
attitude toward Germany. 

After the Jay Treaty, our trade treaties with England 
were one act after another of contemptuous disrespect of 
our national rights, which finally culminated in the War of 
1812, During this time English propaganda in the United 
States was organized oflflcially as an aid to English military 
power. It was only by a miracle that the Federalist seces- 
sionist faction were prevented from taking New England 
out of the Union and setting up an independent State, sub- 
ject to England, under the nominal headship of a member 
of the English royal family. The successful ending of the 
War of 1812, was coincident with the Congress of Vienna, 
where the Czar of Russia, a well-intentioned theorist and 
a firm believer in the "Divine right," was manipulated by 
Metternich in formulating a league — deliberately designed to 
uphold imperial absolutism in Europe — which was called 
the "Holy Alliance." 

The reaction of the United States to its victory over 
England in 1815 was shown in national disapproval of the 
imperialistic "Holy Alliance," followed by the political ex- 
tinction of the Federalist ''pro-Britishers" and the rebirth 
of an eager Americanism, which continued without abate- 
ment for forty years. This American spirit in 1823, 
brought into being the "Monroe Doctrine," against the integ- 
rity of which, for obvious reasons, the powerful opposition 
of England has been continuous. 

During the twenty-five years after 1815, the development 
of the modern industrial system; the growth of modern sea 
power, following the introduction of the iron ship ; with the 
domestic questions of "Catholic Emancipation" and Chart- 
ism; and the political and economic agitation led by Bright 
and Cobden in England and John Mitchel and James Fenton 
Lalor in Ireland, kept England so busy at home that it had 
not time to bother with America. The changes following 

7 



the birth of the factory system and the debased position 
of the worker, especially in England, was accompanied by a 
spirit of industrial protest in England and the continent 
which permitted the United States to work out its own 
program unhampered by foreign diplomatic influences. 

After the iron ship was introduced, in the early 40"s, the 
United States answered the attempt of England to get 
mastery of the seas, by building, in the decade and a half 
ending with 1855 a greater number of ships than had ever 
been turned out by a nation before in the history of the 
world. The answer of England to this demand for trade 
equality was the beginning, in 1840, of the intrigue to break 
down the Monroe Doctrine, by invading Venezuela secretly 
but persistently continued until it was frustrated fifty-five 
years later by Grover Cleveland. A few years later, Eng- 
land's underhand participation in the quarrel, which finally 
resulted in the Mexican War, was designed as the entering 
<vedge to break up the American Kepublic. 

In 1850, Germany and Russia and Japan were still 
negligible factors as commercial powers. The Civil War 
gave Great Britain an opportunity to stifle the growing mari- 
time competition of the United States, which it did with a 
ferocity of hatred and malignity which even the passage of 
seventy years cannot befog. 

With the Civil War ended, American shipping, due 
to English enmity, had been destroyed. The profits in 
manufacturing, and the money to be made in developing west- 
ern farm and grazing areas and providing railroad communi- 
cation between the two oceans, over-balanced the attractions 
of the over-sea trade which, before the Civil War, had pro- 
vided the bulk of the great American fortunes. Fitful but 
unavailing attempts were made to revive our merchant ma- 
rine. America for the next thirty years provided Europe with 
the raw materials and food products it absolutely needed. 
Britain was permitted to dictate as to ocean freight and 
rates; it combined with American railroads; it assumed the 

8 



undisputed authority over American ports and over-seas 
trade. This, for England, is the ideal to be encouraged. 

By 1890 Germany had grown so strong that it demanded 
from England equal partnership on the seas, and after a 
sharp rate-cutting war forced compliance, and sea control 
was thereafter, until 1914, British and German. From that 
moment, the great war to decide which of these two nations 
would be absolute master of the seas was inevitable. 

The policy of political absolutism following the "Holy 
Alliance" in 1815 had forced the workers of Europe into a 
position of economic serfdom, which, since that time, has sent 
thirty-five million aliens to the United States, who constitute 
today, in their descendants, more than 75% of the American 
population. The Irish potato famine in the late 40's, which 
in ten years cut the population of Ireland in half, and started 
the tide of Irish emigration to this country, was a reflection 
of the political absolutism of the "Holy Alliance," slightly 
modified in England by the Reform Bill of 1812. This same 
evil influence with similar results was also at work in France 
Germany and Austria. It was the debased condition of th« 
English worker in the 40's which caused Carl Marx to write 
Das Capital and thus to become the leader of an economic 
theory which, if it ever finds popular support will, in prac- 
tical operation, obliterate and replace democracy, with all 
its faults, with a tyranny under which the imperfections of 
the present industrial wage system will seem like paradise. 
The "Union of Kings," miscalled the "Holy Alliance," the 
model for the League of Nations, designed to uphold political 
absolutism, embroiled Europe in war. It made and kept the 
nations poor. It made the United States rich and great, 
because it forced the coming to this country of the millions 
of aliens, without whose labor our country would not have 
achieved its position and power. This alien labor power en- 
abled our manufacturers to carry out the political policy, 
entered into after the Civil War, of stimulating manufac- 
turing production on the theory that the United States 

9 



could, for an indefinite time, consume all it could produce. 
By 1890 the nation had progressed so fast in "quantity 
production" that in ten months our factories could turn out 
more than the nation could consume in the full year. The 
financial panic which began in the Argentine in 1890 and 
reached this country immediately after the election of 1892, 
delayed for some years full appreciation by the people of 
the United States of the gravity of the situation. A ma- 
jority, in fact do not realize it now. Today we face four 
months' annual unemploj-ment, or, to keep our factories con- 
stantly busy, we must dispose of our additional four months' 
product in the markets of the world. This means "freedom 
of the seas," which England will never consent to, without 
the application of force, and to control the situation even 
before 1890, England saw what was coming and began its 
propaganda campaign to make the United States a subordi- 
nate partner in its enterprises. 

In 1885, the historian Freeman discovered that George 
Washington, who from 1776 to 1782 would have been hanged 
and quartered as a rebel if he had been captured by the 
English, was the "originator of Greater Britain." Yet at the 
very moment Freeman was making this statement, the scenes 
were being laid for the final act of the conspiracy, which, in 
1840, had been planned to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine, 
through English control of British Guiana; only finally to 
be defeated when President Cleveland drew, in its behalf 
in 1895 the sheathed sword of American democracy and 
forced England to back down. If the attack on the Monroe 
Doctrine through Venezuela had not been defeated in 1895, 
it is almost impossible to imagine the result on the future 
of free institutions on this continent. 

The turning point in the history of the American people 
was when we won the war from Spain in 1898, and by 
taking over the Philippines became a factor in the Eastern 
question and the contests between the powers for colonial 
expansion in the Far East. From that moment Germany 
and England instituted propaganda campaigns in the United 

10 



states. Within the space of a few years three separate 
attempts were made by England to establish a partnership 
by so-called Anglo-American alliances, each of which would, 
in fact, violate Washington's admonition not to become in- 
volved in the "primary interests and diplomatic intrigues 
of Europe." And each of which was defeated, largely due 
to the vigilance of the American Irish. 

After 1900 the necessity for a foreign market for the 
surplus products of the United States became more and more 
evident. The speech made by President McKinley at Buffalo 
a few hours before he was shot, was a solemn warning to the 
United States of the need to abandon our policy of com- 
mercial isolation and enter into competition for foreign trade. 
Roosevelt accepted the McKinley policy, and built the 
Panama Canal to open up to America the trade of the Orient 
and to give much-needed encouragement to our merchant 
marine, an ambition frustrated by Great Britain when it 
secured, in 1913, through President Wilson, the repeal of the 
action giving preferential treatment to American ships. 

After 1900, two alien propaganda campaigns were being 
carried on simultaneously in this country. Germany had 
obtained world control of the dye industry. It had the 
monopoly of the world sale of certain American raw mate- 
rials. It dominated the immigrant steerage traffic. It main- 
tained a lobby at Washington. It attempted to establish and 
to a measure succeeded, in spreading by exchange of pro- 
fessors and skilful propaganda, the idea that Germany was 
intellectually and scientifically the leader of world thought. 

England was more practical in its propaganda campaign. 
It saw, long in advance of the rest of the world, and the 
United States in particular, that, in the coming contest with 
Germany, after 1890 — marked for commercial slaughter, 
as Spain, France, Holland and Denmark had been since the 
16th century. In the words of Cecil Rhodes, to make this 
certain "the ultimate recovery of the United States of Amer- 
ica as an integral part of the British Empire" was essential. 

11 



Rhodes had started out "to paint the map of the world British 
red," and, to further the interests of the British Empire, he 
said he would "annex the very planets if he could." Working 
with Rhodes in the United States was the late Andrew Car- 
negie, who said that "as surely as the sun once shone on 
Britain and America united, so surely it is one morning to 
rise upon and greet again the re-united States of the British 
American Union." 

And then came the Great War. When it started, we 
were selling less American-made shoes and manufactured 
goods in Europe than we were in 1910. The year before 
the war started, an investigation by the United States Senate 
disclosed the fact that a shipping combine, English and 
German, with a branch in the United States ostensibly under 
the American flag, had it in its power, from an oflBice in Lon- 
don, to decree that American citizens could be shut off from 
overseas trade. It was not possible to start a competing line 
between North and South America or any European or Orien- 
tal port. In fact, the right of the United States to foreign 
trade, except on terms dictated by this alien shipping com- 
bination, did not exist. It does not today. England controls 
the seas. 

Commercially, America is in chains, and doomed to slow 
down production one third or find its wage earners unem- 
ployed a corresponding period each year. The second of Wil- 
son's "14 points" was lost on the way to Paris. It 
is to maintain this sea control that we are being 
soothed by propaganda, one form of which is to appropri- 
ate our national heroes. Lord Bryce said, at the dedication 
of the Lincoln statue in London this year, "He (Lincoln) is 
as much ours as he is yours." Adams was our ambassador 
to Great Britain, during the Civil War. Read in his memoirs, 
and those of his son Henry how the English regarded Lincoln 
while he was alive. Every infamous slander that could be 
devised was constantly used against him, yet today "he is 
as much ours as yours" and Lloyd George is called a second 
Lincoln. 

12 



We elected a President in 1916 because he kept us out 
of war. Within five months from that time we were at 
war, and every act of the government since has had the 
result to keep us out of peace. 

We allowed England through Kathom openly to attack 
our most distinguished men, and openly to dominate the 
agencies of publicity; to control the secret service; to create 
and circulate wholly unfounded scares about a largely 
mythical enemy-alien agitation; and to segregate into a 
separate class every person in the United States who dared 
to hint, what subsequent events have proved, that as England 
used Germany a hundred years ago to subdue Napoleon and 
wipe out France as a commercial competitor, and as a hun- 
dred years later, in 1914, it used France to subdue and wipe 
out Germany, England's then most important commercial 
rival, it was inevitable, because gratitude for services does 
not exist in English diplomacy, that the United States, which 
had saved England from extinction, in 1917, would, as Eng- 
land's only remaining commercial rival, be the next nation 
that England would move ruthlessly to destroy. 

AVhat are the direct present manifestations of British 
activity in America? The limitations of time compel only 
the briefest mention of a few of the more important. 

First, the attack on our public schools, proved con- 
clusively to be under the inspiration and direction of Lord 
Northcliff, which attempts to change our history text-books 
to disparage the personalities and motives of the principals 
in the American Revolution. According to this propaganda, 
Washington and his colleagues were wrong, and only the 
leaders of an ignorant, criminal and cruel mob. American 
Independence was only a sudden thought, and not the result 
of long growth and development. There was no persistent 
desire by the colonial patriots for Independence and liberty 
to work out their own destiny. There was no struggle based 
on the rights of man. One of the greatest epochs in the 
forward march of civilization was as if only "an occurrence 

13 



in a fairy tale." The American colonies would have been 
better off fourteen decades ago if they had remained under 
British rule. The effort is intended to replace the iron 
chains of Colonial oppression with the gilded ones of Domin- 
ion allegiance. This proposition is the most impudent 
affront ever offered to a friendly nation in the history of 
the world. A similar campaign would not be tolerated 
for a day by any European nation. It is possible 
in the United States only because of our lack of knowl- 
edge of its extent, and our good-natured confidence 
in our own destiny. This propaganda, is the more repre- 
hensible because it comes at a time when the nation is con- 
centrating on an "Americanization" movement to repel the 
appeal to Bolshevism. To work among aliens to build up 
respect and loyalty for the United States while a stupen- 
dous plot is under way to destroy the very thing we are 
pleading with these aliens to preserve, is wasted effort. We 
cannot do the one and ignore the other. As Benjamin 
Franklin said, "Those who give up essential liberty to pur- 
chase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 
The "revised" history text-book propaganda has been fully 
exposed. It exists in every American State, but, as the facts 
are becoming known, is rapidly being put on the defensive 
everywhere. 

An important auxiliary British propaganda agency is 
the moving picture. Five American film companies have 
been absorbed by British capital, and films are usually dis- 
tributed without charge — Sir Gilbert Parker, who repre- 
sented Lord Northcliff in the U. S. as publicity agent during 
the war is now in California, supervising the preparation 
of propaganda scenarios. The London Times in its issue 
of September 12th boastiugly stated that 30,000 propaganda 
films are now being shown in the United States. 

It is also an interesting fact, worthy of mention here, 
that the American agencies defending and supporting the 
British inspired "reform" of our school text-books are all 
imbued with the sinister effort to Bolshevise public school 

14 



control, as proposed by the Smith-Towner bill. Ever since 
our Republic was born it has been obliged to fight against 
the creation of a caste in a democracy, and if this effort 
succeeds it can wipe out the spirit of American Nationalism 
in one generation. 

Another important machine of propaganda is the occas- 
ion of the Tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
In this we are seeing an extension of this same attack upon 
fundamental and long-held American beliefs. The band of 
religious enthusiasts wKb, for their souls' peace, crossed the 
seas in the "Mayflower" in 1620 are, in this tercentenary 
year, being transformed. "They have suffered a sea change 
into something new and strange.'' With one wave of the 
pro-British wand they have become pioneers of British im- 
perialism, conscious carriers of the blessings of Anglo-Saxon 
civilization to the then almost unknown continent of America 
and progenitors of the pro-British propagandists of today. 

We must excuse some of the enthusiasm of people who, 
having little to be proud of in their present life, are 
desperately anxious to hitch themselves to a past of some 
significance; but there is absolutely nothing in the story of 
the Pilgrims to justify the new interpretation put upon 
their journey to this country three centuries ago. 

In cold fact, who were they? A party of men and women, 
of what might l>e called today, the English lower middle-class, 
who had become dissatisfied with the rule and ritualism of 
the Church of England and had formed a congregation of 
their own, evolving a form of belief and worship based, as 
they believed, more truly upon the Bible. In order not to 
have their peculiar tenets interfered with they left England, 
at first for Holland, but not liking the environment there 
and hoping, also, to better themselves economically, they 
took ship for America, landing, by chance, at that part of 
Massachusetts which years before had been called Plymouth 
on the map of John Smith. 

Against these brave-hearted men and women, no one of 

IS 



us today wants to utter a word. Deprecating their narrow- 
ness of religious belief and polity, we may still admire their 
virtues of pluck and endurance. But it is the height of 
absurdity for the tercentenary celebrators of today, to try to 
make out that these people were the advance guard of British 
imperialism, or that they came bearing with them the sacred 
fire of "freedom" which they had received, in setting out, 
from Britannia herself. 



The facts in the case are that they were, in a very real 
sense, rebels against the power and policy of their own 
country, very glad to escape from under the heel of her 
economic and religious oppression, very resentful of the 
continuous attempt made to control them by the Stuarts, 
Cromwell and Hanoverians from the time of their arrival 
here, and up to the Revolution, and very much concerned, 
not, with extending the power of the Crown, but with attend- 
ing to their own affairs and working out their own salva- 
tion — religious, political and economic. 

It would be a great surprise to the Pilgrim Fathers if 
they could now be told that they were stirred by the ''Anglo- 
Saxon impulse," and they would have been equally surprised 
if someone had prophesied to them that the nation whose 
king had "harried them out of the land" would, in three 
hundred years, be claiming them as fully-accredited emis- 
saries of British ideas. 

This view of the Pilgrim incident in America's history 
fits in with British propaganda in other directions. If it 
can be shown that the very Fathers of the first Massachusetts 
colony had the same concepts of the mission of the British 
Empire as those held today by Lloyd George and Sir Auck- 
land Geddes, of course the rest is easy. 

This, then, is a deliberate attempt on the part of Great 
Britain to Anglicize the tercentenary celebration. Honest 
Americans who love the lime-light and delight in English 
approval are being used to further this attempt. As to this 
there is no doubt in the world. Evidence of it accumulates. 

16 



British officials are active in it, although it is interesting 
to note that the Pilgrim celebration in England, so far a*s 
the English people themselves are concerned, has fallen very 
flat indeed, the reason for this being that the Pilgrim Fathers 
are almost unknown to the British people. If they ever 
think of them at all, it is as a queer set of people who, being 
out of step with the rest of their countrymen, fled away to 
America, and "good riddance to them." 

Another principal object of British propaganda is to 
build up and extol a mythical Anglo-Saxon race, and to 
monopolize, for England's sole credit, every worthy act done 
in the world by any person speaking the English language — 
exactly as the term "Scotch Irish" was invented to shut the 
great majority of the Irish race from all credit for notable 
achievement in any department of human affairs. This prop- 
aganda has enlisted in this country an army of "Near 
Americans," one of whom has clearly stated the purpose 
of the Anglo-Saxon campaign. President Nicholas Murray 
Butler, of Columbia University, described what he calls the 
"Anglo-Saxon Impulse," in the London Times (July 4, 
1919) : 

"Nothing seems to me more clear than that the world 
desperately needs for its leadership, guidance and safety, 
precisely those qualities of mind and character, known 
in modern history as Anglo-Saxon. It is the extraor- 
dinary persistence of the Anglo-Saxon impulse which 
brought America into existence, * * * it is the 
underlying and controlling fact in Alnerican life. It has 
furnished the warp through which the shuttle of time 
and change has woven the threads which make American 
historv. 

ft/ 

/ "Despite the large Irish, German, Slavic, Italian, 

Scandinavian and Jewish additions to the original 
American population, the Anglo-Saxon impulse holds 
its own. In America it is repeating, on a larger scale, 
the history of England, and it is drawing to itself sup- 

17 



port and strength from the other and varied nationalities 
that are here joined to it." 

This is the most extraordinary misstatement of fact 
probably ever made by an American, the more so because it 
seems deliberately designed to disparage the United States, 
and especially to take away from the 75% of the population 
which are not English even by remote connection all credit 
for the progress of this country. This "Anglo-Saxon im- 
pulse" myth discredits the influence of the Spanish in 
Florida ; the Huguenots in Virginia ; the Swedes in Delaware 
and New Jersey ; the Dutch in New York and Pennsylvania ; 
and the Irish in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. If 
there ever was an Anglo-Saxon impulse influencing human 
affairs it has not operated for a thousand years. This being 
true, everything based on this myth falls flat. It is at best 
a pleasing phrase used freely without understanding. Its 
serious use by any person claiming to be educated is proof 
absolute either of superficiality, or a desire to fall in with 
the anti-American program, and to encourage and support 
its general adoption. 

We are finding in the United States today a skillful 
propaganda calculated to stir animosity against Japan, like- 
wise against France. An inspired propaganda produced 
mobs in New York to protest against German opera, 
months after opera in Grerman was being sung in London 
and in Paris. We are still at war with Germany, which 
is anxious to resume with us the trade relations which are 
going on with England. Russia, our traditional friend, has 
been manipulated into a position of enmity to the United 
States. Italy resents our hostile British-inspired attitude. 
An anti-United States trade campaign inspired by Great 
Britain has been going on for more than a year in South 
America. Our past friendly relations with China are a 
liability instead of an asset. 

The American people will do well to deliberate care- 
fully before they accept at face value accusations against 

18 



the United States Shipping Board, and if wrong-doing is 
shown, as may be possible, to remember that Admiral Ben- 
son, who has become a particular object of foreign enmity 
because of his inflexible Americanism, did not come into 
power until after the Armistice and subsequent to the award- 
ing of substantially all ship-building contracts. The ex- 
posures by Admiral Benson and Matthew Brush, in charge 
of the Hog Island shipyards, of British attempts to cripple, 
by unfair discrimination, and to increase the cost of our 
merchant marine gives sufficient incentive for the utilization 
of existing anti-American propaganda agencies to discredit 
our merchant marine before the American people. 

Another propaganda campaign under the direction of 
Sir George Paish is working to have the United States 
cancel our war loans to the Allied powers, on which inciden- 
tally no interest has been paid. If this is done, it means 
that England will save |5,000,000,000, and the burden of 
110,000,000,000 will fall on the United States, or, translated 
into the cost on each individual of a gift to England and 
the Allies of |500 from each family in the United States. 

On the other hand, there is imperative need for England 
to crave and secure, if possible, the support of the United 
States in its present undertakings. As the chief result of 
the war, from which, with hypocritical emphasis, it alleged 
it did not seek an added foot of territory, it emerges with 
control over one-half of the earth's arable surface, all of 
the seas, and one-third of the earth's people, with control of 
the agencies of news and of business, the cables and wireless, 
with physical possession of the trade routes to the East; 
with ownership of the future fuel-oil resources of the world ; 
and, most important, with imperial dominance over the areas 
upon which the world must depend for its daily food. Eng- 
land is now engaged in the life and death struggle to hold all 
these gains and looks to the United States of America to be 
her prop as junior partner in her world imperialism. Eng- 
land sees in Russia, France, Germany, China and even in the 
land of her partner, Japan, the rapidly gathering clouds of 

19 



distrust, suspicion and resentment. In Africa, India, Egypt, 
Mesopotamia, Persia, Arabia, Albania and Ireland, the souls 
of hundreds of millions of subject peoples are filled with the 
rising spirit of nationhood. This spirit was kept alive by the 
Irish race for hundreds of years, when it had almost died out 
in the rest of the world. It was given rebirth by the Amer- 
ican Revolution, and two years ago confirmed in its hope of 
full flower by the apparent success of the altruistic objects 
for which the United States entered and won the war. Now 
it is being crushed by a reign of terror furiously enforced by 
Lloyd George and the leaders of the British Empire. The 
aspiration for liberty is a part of human nature; it never 
dies. It may be crushed for another century if the answer 
of this country is wrong. Can any American doubt what 
that answer will be? 

Ever since the beginning of the United States of Amer- 
ica the Irish have been coming here and staying here. It is 
no disparagement of the contributions which other peoples 
have made to the development of America to assert that no 
element more than the Irish has brought hither an affection 
for the country so free from the alloy of selfishness, so un- 
mixed with the lingering thought of loyalty to another 
government. 

This is so in the very nature of the case. The govern- 
ment from which they fled was an alien government to which 
they felt they owed no real allegiance, so there was no senti- 
mental barrier in their souls toward pledging themselves 
to be loyal to the United States against all other govern- 
ments, especially against that to which nominally they had 
belonged. 

They lost no time weighing the advantages and dis- 
advantages of Ainerican citizenship. It was the only real 
citizenship they knew, and they accepted its privileges and 
its opportunities with singular alacrity and gladness. 

The imperial schemes and dreams of Europe had had 
no influence on them as Irishmen. Still less could such sin- 
ister attachments affect them as American citizens. 

20 



Their love for America has, therefore, been one of extra- 
ordinary strength and purity. It has had no ulterior motives, 
in the strict sense, for the sympathy they have always shown 
toward the struggle for independence of the country of their 
blood, the hopes they have entertained in her regard and 
the help they have given have been only another expression 
of their appreciation of American liberty, and a desire to 
see that liberty prevail throughout the world. 

Thoroughly imbued with this love for freedom, the Irish 
element in this country has been absolutely American. The 
success or failure of no other government save the American 
government has ever influenced their thought or action. In 
particular, this freedom from any "entangling alliance" has 
made them especially keen-sighted when American interests 
were involved, and especially quick to scent danger in move- 
ments that too many other Americans had accepted at their 
face value but which were in reality plots against the very 
existence of an American spirit and an American state. 

Such an active, clear-sighted love as this for America 
has not been welcome in some quarters, as is well known, and 
there has been an attempt to sneer at or cry down as "Irish 
hatred" manifestation of American patriotism on the part 
of the Irish element here unless it connects itself with the 
intertwining of the British flag with the Stars and Stripes 
and maudlin expressions of "Anglo-Saxon affection." The 
hyphen in Anglo-Saxon has been consecrated, and the hyphen 
that binds the American with Ireland execrated. But the 
only hyphenism of which the Irish in all their history in 
America can be justly accused is that which properly binds 
every real human being "to the rock from which he was hewn 
and the pit from which he was digged." 

When all's said and done, the Irish are in America, a 
sane and saving influence for the perpetuation of American 
ideals; and they are not ashamed of standing where the 
Fathers of the American Eepublic stood in their day, against 
all attempts to hurt or harm, to minimize or molest the land 

21 



to which so many hundreds of thousands of Irishmen and 
their American sons have, in all her wars, given the full 
measure of devotion. 



22 











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